Hey, remember the BotFail! dudes? The ones who got all pissy because BotCon wouldn’t host their terrible Transformers panel? The ones who couldn’t TELL us why Beast Wars sucks because this very potent information was the heart and soul of their really super awesome panel which was the basis of their entire e-penis?
This is it, on YouTube.
Anyone want to summarise their argument? I got jack of listening to them after about 30 seconds.
All I could get out of it was this: “We haven’t seen much of it (if any), and though it had its good points, everything after G1 sucked wrecking balls.”
Yeah me neither.
( I bet I will get sodomuffin again as a random gravatar. WHY!?!?)
I’ll summarize. I saw these guys for free at gencon (not shown above) and their argument boiled down to
1: Beast Wars broke from the core concept of robots in disguise, because no animal would believe the robots were other animals.
2: They “Went back to the well” by tying it back into G1.
3: Trukk not munkey.
There may have been more, but that boiled down a lot of it. They were…..kinda “tooly”. Douche-esque may be more correct.
OH! The short one objected to optimus primal having lips. Seriously, it was an hour panel and the lip thing was a good 15 minute chunk of that.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha. #1 was presented by (IIRC) an anonymous dude in the pertinent threads a while back. It was no less self-contradictory and ridiculous then, either.
Man, I remember when the original toyline and cartoon “broke from the concept of robots in disguise,” because it was 80% one-of-a-kind rally cars and formula racers and robotic dinosaurs. Really, if you see this driving down Main Street, that’s not a fucking disguise. Disguise was NEVER a big issue in the original cartoon, and the insistence that it was integral to the franchise originated only once Beast Wars happened and retards needed a reason to hate it.
Arguably a toyline made up of generic street cars really wouldn’t have sold very well, but yeah, the biggest appearance “Robots in Disguise” makes as a concept is usually in the theme tune.
Yeah, Transformers, like most things, is governed by the Rule of Cool. Lamborghini Fire Chief cars are cool. So are velociraptors.
The other side of that is who are they disguising themselves from? The natives? Their enemies? Both?
Their obvious faction symbols in vehicle mode seem like it’d get in the way of disguise from either. Nor does the disguise idea work past a first encounter. Even in the Marvel stuff, Megatron attacked semis who merely looked like Optimus Prime in case it might be him. If Transformers really cared about disguise, they’d change altmodes after every battle.
He did? That’s hilarious.
If I’m not mistaken (and it has been a while since I watched Beast Wars through), didn’t Tigatron go live among tigers, where he was instantly accepted as one of them?
Yeah, he even took on a tiger wife. Hot.
Wait… wasn’t Tigatron’s alt-mode actually female?
Does that make it a LESBIAN tiger wife?!
Huh. I think you’ve just given Transformers a first in US childrens television-Lesbian relationship.
Especially considering his altmode was a female tiger. MMMM Lesbian Tigers!
Great minds man, great minds.
*facepalm*
It’s the lack of self-awareness on these Wasabi shmucks’ part that most makes me want to puke my guts out. They really truly think they deserve a spot in the panel room next to Hideaki Yoke and Bob Budiansky, and that their fan theories and top ten lists and whatever mean half a shit to anybody else in the world and deserve to be paid money for them. It’s like they don’t even know the Internet exists but they want to make money from it anyway.
You don’t need to go to a damn convention to see cheap shit like this, you just Google “Transformers” and it will all come up. Even if they got all their shit right, even if they weren’t blowing snot on audience members who disagreed with them, THERE’S NOTHING SPECIAL ABOUT IT.
But when you fucking LIVE on the convention circuit and go to 40 conventions a year, nothing about them has to be special anymore and it’s fine to put such random nobodies up on the stage. It isn’t special, it’s a meal ticket. What a bunch of sad sacks.
This.
TTT wins!
So, if their e-peen would be compromised by sharing their arguments for free, does this post count as an e-castration?
If so, it deserves our e-approval for preventing these guys from e-reproducing.
Oh damn. MAJOR second hand embarrassment here. I couldn’t watch all of it.
A couple of thoughts…
1) For ‘professionals’ they don’t know how to handle microphones. They’re holding them like they’re rappers, not talking on a panel.
2) No shirt, no shoes, no panel.
3) Mr ‘Snackpants’ reminds me of Gollum from Lord of the Rings with the way he cavorts around stage. Or maybe a pet monkey. Maybe Tom should get one of those little organs and give snackpants a little cup…
4) Nice of them to get dressed up for the panel.
5) on one of his many blogs, he says they’re considering going to Botcon in CA and getting top tier tickets to do a comparison review. I smell something fishy… or it just may be yet another attempt by Tom to try to destroy a con. He’s done it with Anime cons in FL. He’ll rip into one con calling it things like a fleamarket… while he’ll promote the ‘fleamarket’ con HIS group is working at as the best con ever. Maybe he’s gonna try to start his OWN Transformers convention and fail like he has with Mugglecon (Harry Potter), Anipalooza (anime), Assimilation (sci fi), Invader Con (invader Zim).
It would be hilarious to see him try to “destroy” BotCon. Like he could if he tried.
“No shirt, no shoes, no panel.” Epic. Seeing the short one roll around on the floor like a gimp, in bare feet no less, was the worst part of a bad six minutes.
Yeah, they’ll “destroy” Botcon among the 100-seats-and-under local Florida podunk convention crowd they’re used to extorting. They will do what the goddamn 3H split couldn’t do. Mm hmm.
To quote Roger Ebert, behold as Squeaky the Mouse backfloats down the river and cries out “Raise the drawbridge, for I have an erection!”
I couldn’t make it to the 2 minute mark. Those guys were some serious Douche Baggins.
You did better than me man. Words started coming out of their mouths and my damn douchebag alarm went off in my head. They got what I like to call the “d-bag voice”. It’s that combination of ‘assertive/oblivousness’ that only seems to surface in douchebags for some reason. It’s not with dicks, assholes, cocks or even jerks… Just douchebags.
They got that voice.
So, why do we care that these guys didn’t like Botcon? I’ve never been to Botcon, but I did go to the GI Joe Convention a couple of years ago when it was local to me. From my general admission experience there, it seems like they may have some valid points, at least with respect to general admission. Looking at the customs was pretty cool, and it was really neat to get a peek at the upcoming toys and movie stuff, but other than that, there wasn’t too much to do but check out the vendors. Having said that, if their idea for providing more value for your dollar is holding shitty-ass panels like the one in the video, then no thanks.
I love me some Transformers, but I don’t get the level of angst over these guys. They just seem like forum trolls who didn’t have the sense to stop acting the fool once out in public (i.e. having Peter Cullen sign a picture of Eyore).
It’s not that they hate Botcon. It that their reasons for hating Botcon are so profoundly, mind-numbingly, unbelievably STUPID. Like it’s difficult to comprehend they’re not pulling some kind of elaborate prank because, DAMN. They’re pretty friggin’ stupid.
Yeah, it’s not like I’m the paragon of BotCon lockstepism. I’ve gotten in a few brouhahas myself for the critical things I’ve said about BotCon. But, dude, these guys are really, really dumb and so out of touch with reality to such an insane degree that I can’t help but call them out. Hell, that’s what this webcomic is for, shining a spotlight on FanDumb.
Why don’t they like botcon?
Incidentally, the only reason I wouldn’t want a completely unironic picture of Eeyore signed by Peter Cullen is that he didn’t do his voice in any of the *good* stuff.
It’s perfectly cool to dislike Botcon based on its actual merits. These guys are just defaming it out of spite because their let’s-read-messageboard-posts-at-you panel idea was rejected. And their complaints include saying that the number of rooms in which events were held is MUCH MORE IMPORTANT than the quality of the events themselves. And also that they got so tired after walking the dealer room for 2 hours that they didn’t have the energy to STAND ON AN ESCALATOR to check out the other rooms and thus decided that whatever existed in the vicinity of their own tired feelings must have sucked, and thus the content of those rooms sucked.
Oh, also, if you actually liked Botcon it proves you are an “elitist,” a term which apparently means something not at all like “grown man who can afford to go to 40 conventions a year.”
I guess what I don’t get is how the Internet is chockablock with dumbasses and everyone more or less knows to ignore them. Then these two show up, everyone gets all spun up, and they get all kinds of free pub for their tired schtick. It’s not even like they’re working that hard to antagonize people. Oh well, it gives us something to throw rocks at.
Well, sometimes you have to go look for the stupid and sometimes it follows you home…
I watched the whole thing, but only cos I wanted to see if this was their BW argument. But this video is just them talking about the movie. I am amazed anyone could consider this a ‘panel’ with ‘content’
Is this what happens when Fred Durst gets fat(ter), adopts Gollum as his little lackey, and becomes an annoying transformers fan?
MY EARS, THEY BLEED
Seriously, though, this is their big panel? Pfeh. I’ve never even been to a con, and I can tell this is way below the standard most panels are at (from the reactions of the audience). Their shoddy presentation doesn’t earn them any points, either (you’re not doing karaoke, stop holding the damn mic like that).
Well it’s PART of it. There are 10 parts total for the 2007 version of the panel.
Then there’s the 2010 version in its entirety here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX4abtFSiHQ
I watched the 2010 panel just long enough for them to say that Cosmos was the dumbest transformer because he’s an alien who turns into a spaceship and he was flying over Area 51. WTF?
I’ve seen more quality out of yaoi panels at Otakuthon (not by choice, my ex dragged me to them), for Nightbeat’s sake.
These guys are über-douches. How they continue to be booked at cons is beyond me.
Their method appears to be extortion.
When was this panel recorded? They’re ripping the first movie, and making claims about the second movie that aren’t true.
I actually like the first live action movie. The second one sucks, but hey, they can’t all be good.
This is disappointing. I was hoping for something super dire, like Tom Croom saving a new age priestess from drowning and training with her for the Ironman by deconstructing Beast Wars with his BREATH.
(In the B-plot, the snack trousers fellow would secretly buy a motorcycle.)
Wow. This was… well, boring. Glad to know I’m not the only one who couldn’t take it.
The riffing on the Mt. Dew bots from the movie was cute, in a ‘Youtube Comments Section Funny” kind of way. But if you’re just going to do an opinion piece panel, then at any given moment you need to be more entertaining than Kevin Smith or Bruce Campbell when they do talks. Because those guys are entertaining AND they have credibility. Take away the credibility, and that’s a LOT of ‘entertaining’ you need to be to fill in the gap.
Not seein it.
My sentiment exactly. It’s great they can get access to do a panel. But if you want to be credible, you either have to have name credibility or be working toward it. They have no name, and rolling around on the floor really doesn’t lend itself to credibility.
really…. these guys actually get booked at conventions..
They act like Beast Wars was the rite of Spring or something. (for those of you who don’t know when Tchaikovsky debuted the Rite of Spring…. there were mass riots. People got beat senseless in the streets. The man himself had to sneak out of a Bathroom window for fear of being torn limb from limb.
If this was something they were doing on their own time or on their own web space. (the internet is like the old west…. except that it will never fill up.) Then great they are just a bunch of over-jealous geeks. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But demanding they be allowed at conventions… why? They are nobodies, with all the uniqueness and value of male cow manure. There was nothing informative in that, there was nothing unique or enlightening. They were standing on stage (one of them barefoot none-the-less. I do go barefoot for my sword play… but that’s sword play…. this is supposed to be a formal lecture.) Just saying whatever they felt like, any monkey could do that.
whats the saying…. something like this “An opinion is like an @$$ hole, everyone has one.”
These guys don’t get booked, they do a fan panel.
A lot of the panels at cons aren’t “brought in,” but instead are done by people asking to do a panel at the con.
These are just schmucks who found a soap box.
Well that explains it, then.
Not familiar with how panels are organized at cons like that, so…
*faith in humanity restored*
While I didn’t find them to be the equivalent of Nurgle’s Rot many in this thread have, I can’t say I cared to watch any other videos or was the slightest bit impressed.
Same complaints about the movie we have all been over before. Like the first month of release.
Except now done by 2 goobers who were pretty insulting to their audience.
And they were supposed to get a Botcon panel doing THIS?
Hell, Vangelus posted a video of a guy covering the Transformers videogames at the Canadian con the dyde kicked their asses with content to the point he really needed another half hour or so. (That or not cover fan made projects.)
But these 2 guys are special?
Yeah. They are just trolls and attention whores in an arena where our crazies and trolls have way better skills and talent to the point you just know some of these people are as crazy as their opinions.
We should all just ignore them and go back to worshipping Allspark Almanac 2 for its greatness.
A panel with the 2 writers? That’s something I think we all would love to go to.
Well to be fair, Rufus, this particular panel IS from 2007 so the first movie bitching IS topical. Everything else, though…
“And they were supposed to get a Botcon panel doing THIS?”
No, they wanted to do it but Botcon didn’t let them.
I *think* I watched the whole thing and couldn’t find any mention of Beast Wars. I did see it on the other “Dare!” big video with the annoying chick? But it was barely 30 seconds.
Also, I feel a lot dumber after listening to this crap, and I’m not even a die-hard TF fan.
Why does he keep grabbing at his crotch? Why can’t he stand up straight? WHY IS HE DANCING?
You know, if these schmucks can get a panel at a con, I probably could to promote my music.
I have been working cons for 15 years.
I’ve been in charge of running one for the last 10.
I have put on mediocre panels myself, and I’ve been witness to some truly terrible ones as well.
And this is on the list of “Things I wouldn’t let in my own panel rooms”
There, I said it.
MAN, THESE GUYS ARE AWESOME!!!! I TOTALLY HATE BEAST WARS NOW!!!!
So they what a whole panel just to complain? why?
They made some good points about the suckitude of the films.
So, I found these guys amusing, mainly because they share my frustration with Bay’s films. And the audience there seemed to enjoy it as an informal discussion/roast of the films. But it’s totally not an appropriate panel for Botcon. Fine for some other comic convention, but not for a convention with heavy involvement from Hasbro.
A little History Lesson…
Wasabi Anime was created back in 2001. At a TINY convention called Anime Express, they offered a ‘free’ breakfast to everyone at the con. Since most people slept IN THE VIDEO ROOMS at this con, a free breakfast was wonderful! Except it wasn’t free. It was a cult initiation. Basically, if you joined their ‘club’ or started subsidiary clubs and sent him dues, you would get discounts at anime stores (Not sure if anyone did) and other ‘benefits’.
Wasabi started ‘helping out’ at conventions. Since he had a group of friends/followers/toadies he could promise a con X amount of help (volunteers, running video rooms, etc) in exchange for some passes and panel time. Eventually his control grew and grew.
His core group of followers became like the SS. You couldn’t diss Tom without them going for your throat. And if a convention didn’t want Tom’s help, well, Wasabi would find some kind of problem with the con and start a boycott. Or they would just smear the people running it.
If Wasabi/Tom was part of your con and you spoke against him, well then he’d threaten to take away his volunteers… and since most of the volunteers were his, he could effectively shut down a con.
If any of his followers tried to leave Wasabi, they might as well become lepers. Friends who were in Wasabi and tried to leave were told they could not volunteer at a con if they quit. Basically, they were blacklisted.
At one convention, the rules stated you had to be in the room by the start time to be in the cosplay convention. For ‘some reason’ the start time was delayed for a half an hour… at which time Tom returned from the store and the contest began. He wasn’t disqualified… in fact he ‘won’ an award.
He destroyed the reputation of a con photographer who used to show proof that Wasabi’s ‘Animusicals’ weren’t filled to capacity as Tom claimed.
His group attends every con both large and small… EXCEPT those who refuse his help. He calls one of the biggest conventions that is Sci-Fi/Anime a ‘flea market’ con because of the large dealer’s room. Yet another con that is smaller and similar is considered wonderful… since he has panels at it. Some tiny cons are promoted if he’s involved, but others that refuse his help are maligned.
Don’t even get me started on his wife’s cosplay group (the girls of Wasabi Anime) who won best of show for dressing up as the girls in the Fanta commercial… AT AN ANIME CONVENTION with the reasoning that Fanta is sold in Japan (even though the commercial was American).
If what you’re saying is true, that’s absolutely terrible.
(Although about the Fanta girl thing — most cons I go to don’t restrict genre on their cosplay contests… although how bad were the other costumes where that actually *won* something?)
It’s true. The other costumes were pretty good. The general rule in Florida anime cons is that the costume must relate to Japanese animation, video games or Japanese culture (Jpop, Loli, etc). The Fanta girls were none of these.
And it’s true. A lot is not public knowgledge. I have been behind the scenes and have others (like the person who was banned) are friends.
Oh, and the thing he says on his site… the “I’ll save a seat up front for you.” is a ploy he’s pulled before. Last time I saw it was for his Animusical.
I also forgot to mention how he complains (threatens) when people do similar ideas to his panels, but it’s perfectly fine when he takes other people’s ideas. Even when one of his ideas included personal attacks on individuals from other cons.
The Wisconsin Anime Con scene is much looser in its genre requirements for cosplay contests, so I just guess my perspective is a little different.
Reading all this, it makes any drama in the Wisconsin/Minnesota con scene seem practically non-existent, which is pretty impressive if you think about it.
We need these guys at AA. “Well, I’m taking my volunteers”. 5 minutes later, the spaces are filled by everyone within 10 feet. Mwahaha.
Ever notice no one throws a stink about Megatron being a T. rex? Or a tank in G2? Or a jet? Or a hand?! And as always, there is no better argument than “Optimus Prime was a truck. He’s not Optimus Prime…or a monkey”.
Vid is a wikkle itty bit mindless
I’ve always figured it was because Megatron isn’t as associated with his alt-mode or look as Prime. When G1 Megs was upgraded, he became a futuristic howitzer, and, later on, a tank. G1 Prime, on the other hand, stayed a trailer truck with a red cab, no matter how much you upgraded him. When RiD rolled around, Prime stayed a red truck (albeit a different kind, but still), while Megatron became a ten-changer. Similarly, the Unicron Trilogy saw Megatron as a tank, a starship, and a triple-changer car/jet, none of which looked at all similar. Prime? Still a red truck. They even mostly transformed the same: cab becomes chest, rear section becomes legs, pull out arms and head. Even Movie Prime, one of the most needlessly complex TFs ever, transformed like that.
Prime’s design is also more consistent than Megatron’s. The heads are almost always identical, they almost always have “windowboobs” (even Laser, RiD, or Powermaster Prime, whose windows go elsewhere, have superfluous ones), and their colors are universally red on top and blue on bottom. The most Megatron usually gets is a sort-of-similar head and a big cannon. TFA Megatron, Energon Galvatron, and TFP Megatron are pretty similar to other incarnations, but they’re the exception, not the rule, and only TFP Megatron shares his altmode with his inspiration
People are just much more attached to the idea of Prime as a truck than Megatron as a pistol. They know it’s impossible to get real toy guns these days, anyway.
But, to avoid sounding like I’m on these assholes’ side, having a truck Prime in Beast Wars would have been nonsense, and, of all the animals out there, a gorilla is probably one of the best. Big, square-ish, turns into a robot easily, and as the only member of the group who can stand upright, more of a leader.
Who the hell are these clowns? Lame.
I find it funny that they won’t talk about it on there blog.